Lecture 5 - _Cities and Urban Life - Anthropology-Sociology 201- (Lecture 2 : https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/05/cities-and-urban-life-anthropology-201.html) (Lecture 3 : https://take10charles.blogspot.com/2022/06/cities-and-urban-life-ant-201-lecture.html) Professor Charles Brown 1) “Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction.[1] In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space

As the title of Chapter 6 is “ Spatial Perspectives: Making Sense of Space” I post here definition of “space” , where it is a very fundamental concept. Sociology and anthropology are concerned with how human made objects and human activity or behavior events have relative position and direction and interaction with each other- In this chapter that behavior in cities and metropolitan areas. This cultural behavior or behavior based on rules, purposes values of a particular people’s history. The system of making human lived space in accord with certain patterns of 2 dimensional lines and circles is part of European culture or history or cosmology or worldview, including Euclidean geometry and Analytical Geometry – Cartesian Coordinates.

Municipal Boundaries are set by government –city, county, state. Detroit has an international boundary with Windsor in Canada. If Windsor were not in another country, it most likely would be part of the Detroit metropolitan area. It has automobile industry plants. Boundaries marking off territory to be owned as private property and ruled by force of arms by a state power, was an original characteristic of the first city in Mesopotamia, (at the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq) , about 6,000 years ago . It distinguished so-called Civilization from Stone Age society, which had kinship or family groups sharing land. Territory is now mainly national boundaries. Boundaries, likes streets, are imaginary lines by which we organize 2 dimensionally on space in producing in 3 dimensional space (in the terminology of Sociologist Henri Lefebvre discussed below). 2) Whole US on a rectilinear grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System “The Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the surveying method developed and used in the United States to plat, or divide, real property for sale and settling. Also known as the Rectangular Survey System, it was created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 to survey land ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, following the end of the American Revolution. Beginning with the Seven Ranges in present-day Ohio, the PLSS has been used as the primary survey method in the United States. Following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the Surveyor General of the Northwest Territory platted lands in the Northwest Territory. The Surveyor General was later merged with the General Land Office, which later became a part of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Today, the BLM controls the survey, sale, and settling of lands acquired by the United States Urban design As roads have typically been laid out along section boundaries spaced one mile (1.6 km) apart, growing urban areas have adopted road grids with mile-long "blocks" as their primary street network. Such roads in urban areas are known as section line roads, usually designed primarily for automobile travel and limited in their use for non-motorized travel. In post-World War II suburbs, commercial development has largely occurred along and at intersections of arterials, while the rest of the former square-mile sections have generally filled with residential development, as well as schools, religious facilities, and parks. One example of this is the Mile Road System of Detroit, Michigan.” Occasionally, and more frequently in a metropolitan region's inner postwar suburbs than in outer areas, arterials are located at approximately half-mile intervals. This strictly regimented urban (or suburban) structure has coincided with the similarly strict practice of Euclidean zoning (named after the town of Euclid, Ohio, which won a 1926 Supreme Court case Village of Euclid, Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co., which established the constitutionality of zoning). In Euclidean (geometry) zoning, use of a property is dictated and regulated by zoning district, the boundaries of which are often based on locations of arterials. West of the Appalachians, road systems frequently follow the PLSS grid structure. The results can be 90-degree intersections and very long stretches of straight roads.[9][10] https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/city-and-architecture/a3382-10-benefits-of-the-grid-system-in-urban-design/#google_vignette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan _Above as examples of Lefebvre’ social production of space _ Henri Lefebvre’s theory of science of cities is discussed at length starting on P 176 of Chapter 7 of the text. Also, the Wikipedia says the following about Lefebvre, whose theory the text indicates its great favor for. “Lefebvre contends that there are different modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization) from natural space ('absolute space') to more complex spaces and flows whose meaning is produced in a social way (i.e. social space).[24] Lefebvre analyzes each historical mode as a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (le perçu), representations or theories of space (le conçu) and the spatial imaginary of the time (le vécu).[25] Lefebvre's argument in The Production of Space is that space is a social product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. This argument implies the shift of the research perspective from space to processes of its production; the embrace of the multiplicity of spaces that are socially produced and made productive in social practices; and the focus on the contradictory, conflictual, and, ultimately, political character of the processes of production of space.[26] As a Marxist theorist (but highly critical of the economic structuralism that dominated the academic discourse in his period), Lefebvre argues that this social production of urban space is fundamental to the reproduction of society, hence of capitalism itself. The social production of space is commanded by a hegemonic class as a tool to reproduce its dominance (see Antonio Gramsci). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Lefebvre (Social) space is a (social) product ... the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action ... in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.[27] Lefebvre argued that every society—and, therefore, every mode of production—produces a certain space, its own space. The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a simple agglomeration of people and things in space—it had its own spatial practice, making its own space (which was suitable for itself—Lefebvre argues that the intellectual climate of the city in the ancient world was very much related to the social production of its spatiality).[28] Then if every society produces its own space, any "social existence" aspiring to be or declaring itself to be real, but not producing its own space, would be a strange entity, a very peculiar abstraction incapable of escaping the ideological or even cultural spheres.[29] Based on this argument, Lefebvre criticized Soviet urban planners on the basis that they failed to produce a socialist space, having just reproduced the modernist model of urban design (interventions on physical space, which were insufficient to grasp social space) and applied it onto that context: Change life! Change Society! These ideas lose completely their meaning without producing an appropriate space. A lesson to be learned from soviet constructivists from the 1920s and 30s, and of their failure, is that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa.[30] “ Geographical space See also: Spatial analysis This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Space" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Geography is the branch of science concerned with identifying and describing places on Earth, utilizing spatial awareness to try to understand why things exist in specific locations. Cartography is the mapping of spaces to allow better navigation, for visualization purposes and to act as a locational device. Geostatistics apply statistical concepts to collected spatial data of Earth to create an estimate for unobserved phenomena. Geographical space is often considered as land, and can have a relation to ownership usage (in which space is seen as property or territory). While some cultures assert the rights of the individual in terms of ownership, other cultures will identify with a communal approach to land ownership, while still other cultures such as Australian Aboriginals, rather than asserting ownership rights to land, invert the relationship and consider that they are in fact owned by the land. Spatial planning is a method of regulating the use of space at land-level, with decisions made at regional, national and international levels. Space can also impact on human and cultural behavior, being an important factor in architecture, where it will impact on the design of buildings and structures, and on farming. Ownership of space is not restricted to land. Ownership of airspace and of waters is decided internationally. Other forms of ownership have been recently asserted to other spaces—for example to the radio bands of the electromagnetic spectrum or to cyberspace. Public space is a term used to define areas of land as collectively owned by the community, and managed in their name by delegated bodies; such spaces are open to all, while private property is the land culturally owned by an individual or company, for their own use and pleasure. Abstract space is a term used in geography to refer to a hypothetical space characterized by complete homogeneity. When modeling activity or behavior, it is a conceptual tool used to limit extraneous variables such as terrain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space#Geographical_space City spatial plan of Teotihuacan, ancient Meso America The City’s space is organized based the people’s cosmology-history-culture, beliefs concerning constellation of the sun and earth on a certain date. “The pyramid was built on a carefully selected spot, from where it was possible to align it both to the prominent Cerro Gordo to the north and, in perpendicular directions, to sunrises and sunsets on specific dates, recorded by a number of architectural orientations in Mesoamerica.[8] The whole central part of the urban grid of Teotihuacan, including the Avenue of the Dead, reproduces the orientation of the Sun Pyramid, while the southern part exhibits a slightly different orientation, dictated by the Ciudadela.[9] The pyramid was built over a man-made tunnel leading to a "cave" located six metres down beneath the centre of the structure. Originally this was believed to be a naturally formed lava tube and interpreted as possibly the place of Chicomoztoc, the place of human origin according to Nahua legends….” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_the_Sun ) “Teotihuacan /teɪˌoʊtiːwəˈkɑːn/[1] (Spanish: Teotihuacán) (Spanish pronunciation: [teotiwa'kan] (listen); modern Nahuatl pronunciation (help·info)) is an ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico, 40 kilometers (25 mi) northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Teotihuacan is known today as the site of many of the most architecturally significant Mesoamerican pyramids built in the pre-Columbian Americas. At its zenith, perhaps in the first half of the first millennium (1 AD to 500 AD), Teotihuacan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas, with a population estimated at 125,000 or more,[2][3] making it at least the sixth-largest city in the world during its epoch.[4]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teotihuacan 3) P .188 Critical Urban Theory: Four Basic Principles 4) P. 182 Deindustrialization and Economic restructuring ; globalization 5) Castells p180 quote applied to deindustrialization 6) why has Detroit grown and then shrunk ?, most people are already familiar with the origin and development of the US automobile industry at the beginning of the 20th Century as the engine of economic development and population growth. And naturally, The partial “deindustrialization” of Detroit beginning in the early 1950’s through the 1980’s is the main cause of Detroit’s population decline. This is business-economic determinism of the growth and development or shrinking and undevelopment of a city. It was part of a relative scattering of some main points of industrial production from a concentration in the city of Detroit ( and neighboring Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the World War II era Arsenal of Democracy. It was a shifting of the location of basic industrial production from not only Detroit , but the Midwest to the South, from the U.S. to other countries, in what gets termed post-industrialism, post-Fordism, industrial restructuring. This was possible because of a revolution in transportation and communication ( just-in-time delivery, world cars, robots, containerization , satellite based communication )created by the microchip-computer-digital scientific and technological revolution the latest since the assembly line invented by Ford, and a general automation revolution. //// The Detroit protest rebellion of 1967 had the impact of crystallizing or aggravating a capital boycott on the citizens, the 99%ers of Detroit, that had then been developing for 15 or 20 years, a divestment by the bourgeoisie - big capital - something like that economic blockade or embargo on Cuba. However, not by law rather by private agreement to disassemble Detroit, as Labor Giant. The relationship of business to Detroit as a result is something like the relationship of world capitalism to Haiti since the revolution there a couple of centuries ago. With the corporate flight from Detroit , a capital boycott was inflicted on a former concentration point of capital investment, by suburbanization of factories, plant closings , runaway shops to the South, globalization of production . There was the bullet and then the ballot, a la Malcolm X in reverse: the rebellion, a mass protest or demonstration, guerilla theatre against white supremacist unemployment, poverty and police brutality. Then the 1973 election of Coleman Young as Black mayor extraordinaire, an excellent urban technician. For these exercises of Black power, in leaderless protest demonstration as Free Speech in the form that was developed in dozens of Inner City Ghettos at that time; election of a proud Black Mayor, ;and really for now being 85 percent majority Black population, Detroit is still under economic blockade punishment by the powers that be. "The newsmagazines called Detroit a model city. They marveled at its strong chin and gushed over the heroic benevolence of Mayor Cavanagh, who had become the gallant knight of the War on Poverty by spearing forty-two million federal dollars for the city's poor people. Cavanagh was widely portrayed as a sort of Great White Sympathizer, and the fact is, he worked hard at maintaining a symbiotic rapport with Black leaders. In that spirit, he had established an amicable relationship that let observers to think of Detroit as being immunized against the _outbreak of inner-city rioting that had torn apart Watts in 1965, bloodied Chicago and Philadelphia, and in 1967 was sweeping the country at a rate that would produce 164 incidents, among them major revolts in Cleveland and Newark _ (emphasis added -CB)" - page 170 of _Hardstuff_: the autobiography of Coleman a. Young; "The Big Bang" Chapter 7 The federal government's Kerner Commission report essentially agreed tha the "riot" protests in the dozens of majority Negro ghettoes around the country had legitimate gripes. “Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal”: Excerpts from the Kerner Report "Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White--Separate and Unequal":... Detroit's 1967 mass, spontaneous guerrilla theater, protest were the culmination of a socioeconomic historical shift which was marked by segregating of residence based on race through white flight to the suburbs especially beginning in the 1950s, escaping the move toward integration represented in open housing law. (See Thomas Sugrue, "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Politics in Postwar Detroit," and Coleman Young's autobiography, "Hardstuff.") It was also part of a relative scattering of some main points of industrial production from a concentration in the city of Detroit ( and neighboring Dearborn) to the surrounding suburbs. It was a breaking up of the World War II era Arsenal of Democracy, which had many left-wingers, naturally. In a way, it seems to have been a shifting of the location of basic production from the Midwest to the South, from the U.S. to other countries, in what gets termed post-industrialism, post-Fordism, restructuring. The concentrated proletarian powerhouse was busted up and racially resegregated, on the typical American model: Black vs. white. The bourgeoisie cannot really undo what they have done. They are hoisted on their own petard. Detroit is a pariah society in the national media still, as the latest Time article shows. White masses are shy to move back into Detroit, desegregate; although in 2014, there has been some white popular migration into Detroit. The bourgeoisie will not invest in an African town like this, with so few white people to benefit. The are trying to move more white people in so that they can feel better about investing. They , the bourgeoisie had to economically blockade us like Cuba, or Haiti have been for decades and scores of decades. Like the great heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Jack Johnson, Detroit is unforgiveably Black and Proud as the PBS television documentary has it. Wait, I take that back. They are trying to find ways to invest "in" Detroit, but so that most of the local population will not benefit. They will exploit and "skate" - in other words, con and run, get away without being held responsible for their wrongdoing...unless we hold them responsible, somehow. We, the 99%. So, Time Magazine had a cover story back in 2009 saying that poverty in Detroit today is in part due to the rebellion of 1967, cause and effect, politically and economically - case closed. Actually, it's true. The bourgeoisie are still punishing the rebellion, among other things. Perhaps, Time is making a confession. http://www.pbs.org/unforgivableblackness/about/ Unforgivable Blackness . About the Film | PBS Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century —... pbs.org https://www.mail-archive.com/pen-l@lists.csuc…/msg12528.html https://www.facebook.com/wethepeopleofdet…/…/465954460093259 https://www.facebook.com/wethepeopleofdetroit/posts/465954460093259 http://coreysviews.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/detroit-is-haiti-unforgivably-black/